Food prices often rise or fall with good or bad harvests or because of a change in demand. A recent example is the price of brazil nuts, which by May this year had risen over 60% on European markets.

Part of the reason for the price rise has been on the demand side. Consumption of brazil nuts has increased as more people switch to healthier diets. This includes the purchase of the nuts themselves and as part of healthier snack foods. With supply being relatively inelastic, any rise in demand tends to have a relatively large effect on price.

A more acute reason is on the supply side. There has been a very poor harvest of brazil nuts. The nuts are grown largely in the Amazon basin which has been hit by drought linked to the El Niño effect. This, however, is only a temporary effect and future harvests should increase again as rainfall returns to normal. However, in the longer term, rainfall patterns may change with the effects of global warming.

The price rise in the UK has also be aggravated by the depreciation of the pound since the Brexit vote, which has fallen some 13% against the dollar since June 2016. A rise in the dollar price of brazil nuts has thus led to an even bigger rise in their sterling price.

Thirty years ago, on Monday 19 October 1987, stock markets around the world tumbled. The day has been dubbed ‘Black Monday’. Wall Street fell by 22% – its biggest ever one-day fall. The FTSE 100 fell by 10.8% and by a further 12.2% the next day.

The crash caught most people totally by surprise and has never been fully explained. The most likely cause was an excessive rise in the previous three years, when share prices more than doubled. This was combined with the lack of ‘circuit breakers’, which today would prevent excessive selling, and a ‘herd’ effect as people rushed to get out of shares before they fell any further, creating a massive wave of destabilising speculation.

Within a few weeks, share prices started rising again and within three years shares were once again trading at levels before Black Monday.

Looking back to the events of 30 years ago, the question many fund managers and others are asking is whether global stock markets are in for another dramatic downward correction. But there is no consensus of opinion about the answer.

Those predicting a downward correction – possibly dramatic – point to the fact that stock markets, apart from a dip in mid-2016, have experienced several years of growth, with yields now similar to those in 1987. Price/earnings ratios, at around 18, are high relative to historical averages.

What is more, the huge increases in money supply from quantitative easing, which helped to inflate share prices, are coming to an end. The USA ceased its programme three years ago and the ECB is considering winding down its programme.

Also, once a downward correction starts, destabilising speculation is likely to kick in, with people selling shares before they go any lower. This could be significantly aggravated by the rise of electronic markets with computerised high-frequency trading.

However, people predicting that there will be little or no downward correction, and even a continuing bull market, point to differences between now and 1987. First, the alternatives to shares look much less attractive than then. Bond yields and interest rates in banks (at close to zero), unlike in 1987, are much lower than the dividend yields on shares (at around 4%). Second, there are circuit breakers in stock markets that suspend dealing in cases of large falls.

But even if there is a downward correction, it will probably be relatively short-lived, with the upward trend in share prices continuing over the long term. If you look at the chart above, you can see this trend, but you can also see periods of falling share prices in the late 1990s/early 2000s and in the financial crisis of 2008–9. Looking back to 1987, it seems like a mere blip from the perspective of 30 years – but it certainly didn’t at the time.

Oil prices are determined by demand and supply. Changes in oil prices are the result of shifts in demand and/or supply, with the size of the price change depending on the size of the shift and the price elasticity of demand and supply.

Some of the shifts are long term, with the price of oil varying from year to year or even moving in a particular direction for longer periods of time. Thus the opening up of new supplies, such as from fracking wells, can lead to a long-term fall in oil prices, while agreements by, say, OPEC to curb output can lead to a long-term rise in prices (see the blogs The oil see-saw, OPEC deal pushes up oil prices and An oil glut).

Medium and long-term price movements can also reflect medium and long-term changes in demand, such as a recession – oil prices fell dramatically as the world economy slid into recession in 2008/9 and then recovered as the global economy recovered.

Another long-term factor is the development of substitutes, such as renewable energy, which can reduce the demand for oil; another is developments that economise on power, such as more fuel-efficient vehicles and machines.

But oil prices do not just reflect these long-term movements in demand and supply. They also reflect daily and weekly movements as demand and supply respond to global and national events.

Two such events occurred at the end of August/beginning of September this year. The first was Hurricane Harvey. Even though it was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made landfall across the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, it dumped massive amounts of rain on southern Texas and Louisiana. This disrupted oil drilling and refining, shutting down a quarter of the entire US refining capacity. The initial effect was a surge in US oil prices in late August as oil production in much of Texas shut down and a rise in petrol prices as supplies from refineries fell.

Then prices fell back again in early September as production and refining resumed and as it became apparent that there had been less damage to oil infrastructure than initially feared. Also the USA tapped into some of its strategic oil reserves to make up for the shortfall in supply.

Then in early September, the North Koreans tested a hydrogen bomb – much larger than the previous atom bombs it had tested. This prompted fears of US retaliation and heightened tensions in the region. As the Reuters article states:

That put downward pressure on crude as traders moved money out of oil – seen as high-risk markets – into gold futures, traditionally viewed as a safe haven for investors. Spot gold prices rose for a third day, gaining 0.9 per cent on Monday

Quite large daily movements in oil prices are not uncommon as traders respond to such events. A major determinant of short-term demand is expectations, and nervousness about events can put substantial downward pressure on oil prices if it is felt that there could be a downward effect on the global economy – or substantial upward pressure if it is felt that supplies might be disrupted. Often markets over-correct, with prices moving back again as the situation becomes clearer and as nervousness subsides.

Questions

Search news articles to find some other examples of short-term movements in oil prices as markets responded to some political or natural event.

Why do markets often over-correct?

Explain the long-term oil price movements over the past 10 years.

Why is gold seen as a ‘safe haven’?

If refineries buy oil from oil producers, what would determine the net effect on oil prices of a decline in oil production and a decline in demand for oil by the refineries?

What role does speculation play in determining oil prices? Explain how such speculation could (a) reduce price volatility; (b) increase price volatility. Under what circumstances is (b) more likely than (a)?

OPEC members agreed on 30 November 2016 to reduce their total oil output by 1.2m barrels per day (b/d) from January 2017 – the first OPEC cut since 2008. The biggest cut (0.49m b/d) is to be made by Saudi Arabia.

Russia has indicated that it too might cut output – by 0.3m b/d. If it carries through with this, it will be the first deal for 15 years to include Russia. OPEC members hope that non-OPEC countries will also cut output by 0.3m b/d. There will be a meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC members on 9 December in Doha to hammer out a deal. If all this goes ahead, the total cut would represent nearly 2% of world output.

The OPEC agreement took many commentators by surprise, who had expected that Iran’s unwillingness to cut its output would prevent any deal being reached. As it turned out, Iran agreed to freeze its output at current levels.

Although some doubted that the overall deal would stick, there was general confidence that it would do so. Markets responded with a huge surge in oil prices. The price of Brent crude rose from $46.48 per barrel on 29 November to $54.25 on 2 December, a rise of nearly 17% (click here for a PowerPoint of the chart)..

The deal represented a U-turn by Saudi Arabia, which had previously pursued the policy of not cutting output, so as to keep oil prices down and drive many shale oil producers out of business (see the blog, Will there be an oil price rebound?)

But if oil prices persist above $54 for some time, many shale oil fields in the USA will become profitable again and some offshore oil fields too. At prices above $50, the supply of oil becomes relatively elastic, preventing prices from rising significantly. As The Observer article states:

It is more likely that a $60 cap will emerge as the Americans, who stand outside the 13-member OPEC grouping, unplug the spigots that have kept their shale oil fields from producing in the last year or two.

… The return to action of once-idle derricks on the Texas and Dakota plains is the result of efficiency savings that have seen large jobs losses and a more streamlined approach to drilling from the US industry, after the post-2014 price tumble rendered many operators unprofitable. Only a few years ago, many firms struggled to make a profit at $70 a barrel. Now they can be competitive at much lower prices, with many expecting $50 for West Texas Intermediate – a lighter crude that typically earns $5 a barrel less than Brent.

OPEC as a cartel is much weaker than it used to be. It produces only around 40% of global oil output. Cheating from its members and increased production from non-OPEC countries, let alone huge oil stocks after two years when production has massively exceeded consumption, are likely to combine to keep prices below $60 for the foreseeable future.

Some commentators have seen the victory of Donald Trump and, prior to that, the Brexit vote as symptoms of a crisis in capitalism. Much of the campaigning in the US election, both by Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left focused on the plight of the poor. Whether the blame was put on immigration, big government, international organisations, the banks, cheap imports undercutting jobs or a lack of social protection, the message was clear: capitalism is failing to improve the lot of the majority. A small elite is getting significantly richer while the majority sees little or no gain in their living standards and a rise in uncertainty.

The articles below look at this crisis. They examine the causes, which they agree go back many years as capitalism has evolved. The financial crash of 2008 and the slow recovery since are symptomatic of the underlying changes in capitalism.

The Friedman article focuses on the slowing growth in technological advance and the problem of aging populations. What technological progress there is is not raising incomes generally, but is benefiting a few entrepreneurs and financiers. General rises in income may eventually come, but it may take decades before robotics, biotechnological advances, e-commerce and other breakthrough technologies filter through to higher incomes for everyone. In the meantime, increased competition through globalisation is depressing the incomes of the poor and economically immobile.

All the articles look at the rise of the rich. The difference with the past is that the people who are gaining the most are not doing so from production but from financial dealing or rental income; they have gained while the real economy has stagnated.

The gains to the rich have come from the rise in the value of assets, such as equities (shares) and property, and from the growth in rental incomes. Only a small fraction of finance is used to fund business investment; the majority is used for lending against existing assets, which then inflates their prices and makes their owners richer. In other words, the capitalist system is moving from driving growth in production to driving the inflation of asset prices and rental incomes.

The process whereby financial markets grow and in turn drive up asset prices is known as ‘financialisation’. Not only is the process moving away from funding productive investment and towards speculative activity, it is leading to a growth in ‘short-termism’. The rewards of senior managers often depend on the price of their companies’ shares. This leads to a focus on short-term profit and a neglect of long-term growth and profitability – to a neglect of investment in R&D and physical capital.

The process of financialisation has been driven by deregulation, financial innovation, the growth in international financial flows and, more recently, by quantitative easing and low interest rates. It has led to a growth in private debt which, in turn, creates more financial instability. The finance industry has become so profitable that even manufacturing companies are moving into the business of finance themselves – often finding it more profitable than their core business. As the Foroohar article states, “the biggest unexplored reason for long-term slower growth is that the financial system has stopped serving the real economy and now serves mainly itself.”

So will the election of Donald Trump, and pressure from populism in other countries too, mean that governments will focus more on production, job creation and poverty reduction? Will there be a movement towards fiscal policy to drive infrastructure spending? Will there be a reining in of loose monetary policy and easy credit?

Or will addressing the problem of financialisation and the crisis of capitalism result in the rich continuing to get richer at the expense of the poor, but this time through more conventional channels, such as increased production and monopoly profits and tax cuts for the rich? Trump supporters from among the poor hope the answer is no. Those who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries think the answer will be yes and that the solution to over financialisation requires more, not less, regulation, a rise in minimum wages and fiscal policies aimed specifically at the poor.